A mother

Me and mum

The daughter was looking to her Mother in an attempt to discover her. She knew so little about this woman. They had always communicated poorly. She remembered her in childhood years, always busy with the household and the job. Mother did her best to cook, clean, iron and educate her, but she was a tough nut to crack. The fact that the disorder on her desk might show up in her life did not scare her at all. She was avoiding domestic activities as a lion avoided a cage. Mother would put on a sad face and cater to everything. As years passed, she preferred to keep to herself the thoughts and ideas she would have liked to pass on to her daughter, and went to church and prayed instead.

This time, as always, the daughter had promised herself to stay calm. As usual, she had failed. May have been the planetary alignment or the number of the day in the calendar, but she finally realized that she was holding it more against herself than against the creature who had brought her to life. In an unconscious manner, Mother was initiating the victim and the perpetrator game and she was responding to it. She became aggressive, withdrew into herself and left, self–disappointed, thinking about the next time when she would refuse to let things just happen.

She unfolded the camping chairs in determination. Mother pushed one of them aside, into the shade.

”The sun is bad for me now,” she said, fearing her daughter might interpret her action in some other way. The girl wanted to ask her where she got all these wrong ideas but restrained her words, remembering the way her Mother has supported her, from the sidelines, her whole life. She particularly remembered the big, hardback dictionary her Mother had bought her when she was a college student. The girl never told her she needed it but the woman had figured it out by herself. Words started pouring from the daughter’s mouth, like a river from its bed in flood season.

”Do you know, Mother, that I brag about you everywhere I go? I mean, in front of friends and acquaintances. I’m so proud of you.”

Mother’s eyes gazed even further into the distance.

“You are the reason that enables me to contradict all those people who think family has a crucial influence upon the individual. I give you as an example.”

”Of course it doesn’t,” Mother mumbled, unaccustomed to such long speeches uttered by her daughter.

”No, it doesn’t,” the girl went on lively. “I mean, look at you! My grandparents were plain, ordinary people, with no education. There were no books, no radio or TV set in your house but you enjoyed reading, theatre and opera at an early age. You wanted to study, to acquire knowledge. And now, while other women of your age have trouble moving their legs and arms and lock themselves up in their houses with three locks, you have the guts to travel around the world. You are a super Mum!”

An excerpt from ” A Mother”, a short story included in my debut volume 4 Doors and Other Stories.

Happy Mother Day! Off to give a loving hug to mine!